Free Poison
by distorters
Summary: A one-shot describing Alaska's last moments. Written in third person.


Amidst the fog of intoxication that had enveloped her earlier that night, Alaska Young possessed little sense of time. Earlier that evening, beneath the musty skies of Alabama at twilight, she had dared herself to open a prized box that she carted around but barely ever opened; oftentimes, she could barely bring herself to set her eyes upon it. It was crazy and slightly fucked up, even, that such a small thing held so _much_, for lack of better word. She'd never considered herself an eloquent person, in any sense of the word.

_To be continued_. At the time the statement had come across as slightly vague and just the slightest bit sexy, the front Alaska liked to at least try and put up, but now it sounded stupid and childish as it rang repeatedly in her ears. What was she continuing, exactly? The fabricated romance, the plastic kiss, or had she just screwed everything that she'd managed to build up between her and Pudge up? Even as she pondered, she could feel the realness of the relationship melting away like the small candles used to build up their own personal Mt. Saint Helen's.

Her eyelids seemed intent on betraying her, but before she completely succumbed to the alcohol and fatigue she caught sight of the digital clock glowing red atop the old television, to the right of the video game controllers. The digits comprised of straight neon lines read 2:03; it was only then that Alaska was struck with several disturbing realizations in succession.

Forcing herself to her feet despite her hazy vision and crooked walk, she found herself at the floor's pay-phone with the aid of a flashlight and sat beside it in a criss-cross position like she had so many years before beside her mother. Damn the Creek and its no cell phones policy. True, Alaska was no stranger to breaking rules, but she was always careful to get rid of any tangible evidence. A cell phone was different than a bottle of Strawberry Hill or a couple cigarettes then and there, easy thrown or flicked away. And anyway, a cell phone was such a stupid, trivial thing to get expelled for. She couldn't risk anything else anymore. There was no home. God, she'd get completely fucked up by her dad, should she get kicked out. Futureless, motherless, hopeless - the more significant Trifecta.

She didn't want anyone else picking up when it was Jake's voice clicking through the phone lines. It may have been the boarders' shared phone, but couldn't she have a little peace in the hours when it was dark but morning? When the phone finally rang, she didn't waste any time picking it up. "Jake," she said, enunciating in order to sound, well, as sober as possible.

"Laska." She'd grown to like his shortening of her name. It felt comfortable and it was nice enough to have some familiarity, even if it made her sound like a bleach-blonde Weekday Warrior. "Happy anniversary."

Anniversary. A year of Jake meant a year attending Hickman Territory gigs and driving up on weekends to visit him at college; a year of her tears on his sweatshirt and his hand rubbing her back in circulatory motions. A year of kisses and cigarettes flicked into rivers, of stupid fights that they always emerged from stronger. It meant so much to love someone - and she knew this wasn't puppy love. "Happy anniversary." Her voice was equally sleepy.

There was only so much you could say at two in the morning. There are two kinds of conversations that can be held at such a time: pointless small talk, or the real, deep kind when you bare your soul like it is on display inside a glass case. Alaska preferred the latter, but this was not one of those nights. Perhaps the night a year ago when they had become a pair had been, but now… as she listened to Jake's cute voice, sleepy in the ashen dark, Alaska realized her mind was wandering elsewhere. Her fingers traced the phone numbers and messages scrawled on the wall nearest the phone. The details of a Weekday Warrior party. Somebody's cell phone number; she couldn't place the area code. And… a faded flower, with eight petals of identical shaping. It seemed as though it still smelled of freshly applied Sharpie ink.

She could recall that night of the doodled flower so well. It had been one of those nights she had done nothing but break down and then fallen asleep too late for a Wednesday, feeling like she'd been gutted. And then, it hit her, full force; though she felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her, it was then that she found her voice. To her absolute horror, it shook as she spoke. "Fuck. God. Oh God."

"Alaska?" When he used her full name, she could sense the worry she was causing him. But, in the moment, all she could process was the fact that she was nothing but a big fat disappointment of a daughter and "friend."

"No. I have to go." _Don't cry don't cry oh God don't cry you can't you don't deserve to cry when it's your own motherfucking fault_. "Oh God."

Slamming down the phone before she could hear Jake's voice on the other end, calling her name once again, she entered the room once again with flagrant disregard for her slumbering companions. The door slammed so hard she felt as though it would break off of its hinges, and this combined with the tears she finally let flow could wake even the deepest of sleepers. "I have to get out of here!"

Miles's gentle voice floated to her in the dark, still tinged with sleep but alert nonetheless. "What's wrong?"

For some reason, his quietness made the sobs more drastic, and she avoided looking at Pudge or the Colonel as she screamed, "I forgot! God, how many times can I fuck up?" There was no time for answers, no time for rationale. "I JUST HAVE TO GO. HELP ME GET OUT OF HERE!" She could see the Colonel's lips move in the dark, but didn't care for whatever he was saying. All she could picture was the immobile woman in a knitted pink sweater, a small girl with startled eyes sitting criss-cross applesauce beside her. That small girl had failed that woman once, and for that she had suffered the ultimate loss. And God, oh God, that could not happen again. She wouldn't allow it. "Just get rid of the Eagle for me. God oh God, I'm sorry." With that, the door shuddered and slammed once again, and there she was. Back out in that thick, still, suffocating night that overwhelmed her as she quieted her sobbing as best she could.

Blue Citrus, Blue Citrus, Blue Citrus.

There was so much to do. This could not happen again. She wouldn't let it. Flowers. It was so cold, and she didn't have any shoes on, only those dumb flimsy socks that were now caked with January dirt. Flowers. Flowers, Alaska. It didn't take much of a look to guarantee what she already knew; it was too early in the year for flowers.

Alaska barely registered the popping of the firecrackers, so out of place against the silence of Alabama early morning. Thank God for the Colonel and Pudge. In the end, they were only two more people taking the fall on her behalf. And this realization was horrible. It was a small thing, perhaps. The worst they would get was probably Jury if they were caught. But it meant so much to Alaska, more vulnerable than she had ever been in the early hours of the morning.

"Stop fucking everything up." She spoke to no one, driving alone, inspecting the city that seemed to be encased in a jar. "Jesus Christ. Chip could've gotten expelled because of all your bull. You _made out_ with Pudge on yours and your boyfriends' goddamn _anniversary_ - of all days. Pudge is just a friend. Pudge. Is. Just. A. Friend." The words scared her. When spoken aloud, as opposed to swimming inside her head, they seemed so absolute; she felt so removed from the Alaska that Chip and Takumi and Pudge and Lara knew and at least pretended to love. "Jake is the one you love. I don't know why I need to remind you that, Alaska. Goddamn. You love him you love him. What happened to you tonight?" _Too much, too much_. She did not feel as though she were talking to herself. She was two people, countless people. This was Mary Frances Young telling off Alaska Frances Young. Alaska Frances Young was not telling off herself.

Alaska felt as though she were digging doll graves. Gone was the girl who was born to the lawyer father and the hippie mother; gone, even, was the girl who sat patiently by her mother, unaware that the life had been beaten out of her. Both had been weaned of innocence and thrown back into one body - this wrecked thing with mahogany hair and a smile that didn't quite reach her green eyes. This being that was acquainted with everyone but knew no one and nothing; all in all, she was nothing more than another organism trapped in the goddamned labyrinth of unavoidable, unbearable suffering.

There were few lights that beckoned to her at such an hour, among which were the rose gardens that she'd visited once, in her freshman year. The roses were so numerous that they slithered outside of their barbed-wire boundaries. Alaska had found the whole place disgusting. The roses were nice, but the barbed wire made it feel like a prison. The whole place reeked of despair. Beauty trapped inside of pain.

Usually, she wouldn't do so much as spare the place a glance. But tonight… she pulled over, leaving her keys in the ignition, and exited the car to examine the roses that had managed to escape their prison. They were mostly red and salmon, withering slightly in the cold. A bit further along the sidewalk, someone had planted different flowers around a plaque placed on the ground. White and yellow tulips; Alaska's late mother's favorite flower.

She bent down a bit closer and the plaque shone in the artificial light from the streetlamp. _Connor Koenig. Well-Loved Father, Husband and Friend. RIP. _Beneath the text were his dates of birth and death, forty-eight years apart. He'd gone out straight and fast, on this very godforsaken road. There was something about this Connor Koenig that Alaska felt she identified with. Perhaps it was a premonition. But, in that moment, she felt as though she knew the man. She could almost picture his freshly ironed tie and only slightly alert eyes, unaware, as he gripped the steering wheel, that this drive would be his last.

How fascinating, she thought, allowing her mind to linger for a second. To feel all the pain at once and then nothing for eternity. She couldn't figure out if it was a pitiful or optimal way to go.

The tulips. She needed them. Before she could even begin to feel remorseful for robbing a memorial, she tugged three of the lily-white ones from the ground and glanced around before crookedly hurrying back to Blue Citrus. When she pulled out of the parking spot, flowers in the backseat, she could almost smell the man's blood on the asphalt. At least one thing had gone right tonight; she had found flowers. Her mother's favorite.

But.

_I can't believe you missed the fucking anniversary, of all things. Too busy, what? Making out with a kid who isn't your boyfriend,_ daring _him to let you. You're pathetic, Alaska Young._ In a single stroke, she'd ruined her relationships with Pudge, Lara and Jake, even if none of them knew it at the time. And now she'd missed the other anniversary of the night, the one that could not be celebrated but begged to be _remembered_.

"Why don't you just die?" Once again, the sound of her own choked voice shocked her. She'd read in some book in her Life's Library that if you were alone in an enclosed room, hearing your own voice - talking to yourself - would keep you sane for longer. Here she was, no company in the passenger seat; but for all she knew, she was no longer sane. Fuck, she certainly didn't feel sane. She should have gotten out while she was still at least kind of alive.

Inhaling oxygen like free poison as she turned a corner, she was met with a blaring silence as she drew closer to a red light that glowed like an angel. A fallen one, perhaps. The words spoken by her own mouth continued to haunt her. _Why don't you just die?_

And why not? Who knew what the morning would bring? It would usher in a new Alaska Frances Young, a friendless and guilty girl whose only solace was cigarettes. Stripped naked from the façade she'd put on her whole life, she may well have turned back into Mary Frances. But that little girl was never coming back. All she was was waiting. For what, she wasn't sure.

Maybe she was just homesick for the Great Perhaps. She sure as hell didn't belong here.

Alaska felt a scream escape, though she wasn't sure how it had made its way into her throat. "God oh God oh God." The words looped over and over until they were unhinged from their definitions, until her ears were numb to the sound. "Oh, God, oh God." There was nothing she could say until she finally broke the chain. "Mom…" She could almost see the woman in the rearview mirror; mother and daughter had identical smiles, though neither had showed it off in awhile. But she'd been gone too long. _Can't even remember what she looks like. I can't even remember what she looks like._

As Blue Citrus drew closer to the light, at the same speed she had always been going at that night, Alaska realized that she wasn't alone on the street. A police car's lights flashed and there were so many ways that this fallen angel could save herself, but not one of them were roads she would want to take. And fuck, oh, oh, fuck, there was no way she could stop herself now. Straight and fast. Out of the labyrinth. It was the only way she could possibly go.

There was no more time to scream at the time of when Blue Citrus met the police cruiser. There was no time to think, but regardless, all that was on her mind was Pudge's face, his gentle smile, his vulnerability that made him seem just more human than the rest of them.

With her last laboring breath, Alaska rasped what would remain unknown for eternity: "Fuck your Great P-Perhaps." There would be no "to be continued." She had breached the miles to go, and now she would sleep.

And, at that, it would be in the arms of her mother.


End file.
